March depaNews

 

Happy anniversary, Barry

 

"I hope we are a pretty boring government, because boring is good."

 

In a thorough profile in News Review in last weekend’s SMH, the Premier not only claimed boring was good but that boring meant “that we’re focusing on real issues, making tough decisions around complex issues that hopefully are focused on the public.”

We are not so sure. A boring approach to local government reform won't do anyone any favours and a continuation of the previous Government's reluctance to bite the bullet and amalgamate what are clearly financially unsustainable councils, means a continuation of councils trading insolvent, less money for training, less money for market rates etc. Please, this is an area where being boring isn't the solution.

The announcement last week of a Local Government Review Panel to "investigate and identify options for governance models, structural arrangements and voluntary boundary changes for local government in New South Wales" perpetuates two decades of failed social policy trying to convince those with the most substantial vested interests ( general managers and councillors) to ignore the self-evident. Sweet talking hasn't worked.

Here is an area crying out for something a bit less boring. Come on Barry, do something challenging when you appoint the three members of the Review -  ask depa for a nomination!

Let's not get distracted. We are going to happily celebrate Barry's anniversary with some exciting news because we try not to do boring.

A great opportunity for a female (but not boring) EHO

Over the past couple of years Andrew Spooner and Les Green have acted as our representatives on the Food Regulation Forum - established by the NSW Government to improve consultation and feedback between all the parties involved in the regulation of food and food premises.

Amongst other things, the Forum is the primary source of advice and guidance to the Food Regulation Partnership and it evaluates and provides advice to the NSW Food Authority. Falling within the responsibilities of the Minister for Primary Industries, the new Minister,  Katrina Hodgkinson MP has expressed a desire to try to even out the genders in what has been a uniformly blokey group.  And we are happy to help. After all, look what's just happened to our Committee.

So, we are calling for expressions of interest to be considered by the May meeting of the Committee of Management to be one of our representatives. If you are a woman who is a member and involved in food regulation, then here is an opportunity to have a higher level involvement in policy than your current job will allow.

If you are interested, ring the office. It would be a bit embarrassing if, having women representatives on the Committee proportionate to our women members, we can't find someone.

Increases in compulsory super remind us those Coalition politicians still really hate industry super funds

Last week the Federal Parliament endorsed progressive increases to compulsory superannuation that will see an eventual increase from the current 9% to 12% in 2019. SGC will go to 9.25% in July next year. Compulsory superannuation is a piece of social policy admired across the globe. Originating in a relationship between the ACTU and the Hawke Labor Government, ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty and Treasurer and then Prime Minister Paul Keating created something so obvious and compelling that you wonder why compulsory superannuation didn't exist earlier.

Well, you don't wonder for long. Compulsory national superannuation was initially proposed as part of the 1972 Whitlam initiatives but up until the 1980s superannuation was solely the privilege of predominantly male professions, clustered in the public sector or available after a long qualifying period in the private sector. It was a system that meant there was no proper strategy to improve and protect retirement income levels and this disadvantaged wage earners in the private sector and particularly, women workers. It was pension or nothing.

And superannuation funds were only run by the big banks and insurers and were usually available through company funds with impenetrable governance, questionable decisions about investment and anonymous trustees.

So how can anyone be opposed to a system that introduced compulsory superannuation for everyone, managed through funds with equal representation of employers and employees and with no profits being skimmed off to the big banks?

"Look John, isn't that money we should be getting our hands on for our mates?"

In 1985 the then Leader of the Opposition was John Howard. Howard said this:

"That superannuation deal, which represents all that is rotten with industrial relations in Australia, shows the government and the trade union movement in Australia not only playing the employers of Australia for mugs but it is also playing the Arbitration Commission for mugs".

Howard was commenting on the deal between the government and the ACTU which saw the trade union movement forfeit a claim to 3% productivity improvement as wages to instead be paid in compulsory superannuation - endorsed by the Arbitration Commission and managed by superannuation funds with equal representation of the unions in the industry and the employers.

Howard went on to describe it as a "Chicago racket", referring to the corruption and gangster years of Chicago in the 1930s. But Howard's view was not a lonely one in the Coalition - which has steadfastly opposed every increase in compulsory superannuation since that time, whether it be from 3% to 6%, or the 6% to the current 9%. Antagonistic, moi?

How dare the employees in an industry and the employers run a superannuation fund for people on a not-for-profit basis when the Coalition's mates in banks and finance could have been skimming off the cream investing the money themselves without the employees having any idea where it was being invested, by whom or who were the Trustees managing it on their behalf?

Now there is around $1.4 billion managed in the compulsory superannuation pool in Australia - a figure expected to increase to $3 billion in the next decade.

But the Conservatives who opposed equal access to superannuation still do so. In an article in The Australian on 14 March in anticipation of the increase in compulsory superannuation, Tony Abbott attacked industry super funds creating a "gravy train" for union officials to sit on the boards.

The current Opposition Leader foreshadowed that the Coalition doesn't easily forget their mates losing access to money being made in this area and that they will pursue this at some stage in government.

But the problem for the Coalition is that industry/government funds that exist only to fund retirement incomes for the members rather than create profits for corporations have, in the past eight years to June 2011, delivered 49 of the 50 strongest performances. Corporate funds are regularly at the bottom of the barrel on returns, the fees are invariably higher, the directors and trustees are the real faceless men, and existing solely to provide a profit to the companies that run them.

Any attack on the not-for-profit sector will be driven solely by hatred and envy and puts at risk the retirement incomes of members of those funds. Beware.

Would you buy management consulting from Management Solutions?

Management Solutions is a business unit owned and operated by the Local Government and Shires Association. Ordinarily regarded as authoritative and prudent about its observations because of its relationship with the employers peak bodies, a recent report provided to Nambucca Shire should make future clients cautious.

Nambucca is currently going through a process of reviewing its structure under severe financial restrictions and hampered by a preference of the current GM that the two Director structure remain - currently the GM is also responsible for corporate services but he was initially attracted to the idea that he could also do the planning.

So, they contracted Management Solutions to come in and give them advice. In a series of recommendations prefaced by more negative observations than positive ones, the consultants recommended that the GM absorb the role of Director of Environment Planning - something which "has been successfully achieved" at other councils.

This was news to us and we then went through a fruitless process trying to have the two consultants (Mark Anderson and Greg Ptok, if you were wondering) disclose where those councils were and what was the measure of whether the merger of the two positions had been successfully achieved. They refused - asserting that the Report was now owned by the Council and we should take it up with them but the Council didn’t know what the councils were either. And, so dissatisfied by this lack of professionalism and accuracy was Nambucca’s Consultative Committee, that they resolved, with only the GM’s dissenting vote, to send the report back.

Potentially this is putting the LGSA in a very difficult position. There are significant obligations on a Council going through structural change which may involve redundancy and they exist in the State Award because of an agreement between the LGSA and the three local government unions. And that in turn means that if we found ourselves in the Commission, having challenged the accuracy of that statement with a Council obliged to "provide to the employee(s) concerned and the unions to which they belong, all relevant information", the Council would have to disclose that Management Solutions had gone to ground and wasn't talking. What an awkward position for the Council to find itself in.

We challenged the information contained in the Report, the Council said the consultant hadn't given them information either and the consultants even refused to talk to us. "What business is it of yours?" one of the boofheads asked me.

In the end, (thanks Bill, for your intervention) Management Solutions told the Council that Bogan, Cootamundra and Narrabri were three councils where the role of the Director of Environment Planning had been taken over by the GM, the GM told the Consultative Committee and then we all knew.

But Management Solutions was wrong on all three.

Leaving aside that Bogan would be surprised if it got more than a dozen DAs a year and has absolutely nothing in common with Nambucca, Bogan has an organisational structure without any directors at all - reflecting the size of the Council, it’s just the GM and then a number of managers.

Cootamundra probably confused them because, while the GM is qualified as a planner, they are closer to the two Deputy General Managers model because all functions are divided between a Director Corporate Services and Director Engineering Services.

And wrong again on Narrabri. While the GM’s Department is also responsible for planning and development, work is carried out by properly qualified professionals. And just as the GM's Department is also responsible for Economic and Development but he’s not the Economic Development Officer, and responsible for Human Resources but he’s not the Human Resources Manager, the GM has not absorbed the responsibilities of a Director of Environment and Planning.

How embarrassing. Just as well Management Solutions has such a wide-ranging disclaimer about the accuracy of their observations and their data. Still, if you bought a dud second-hand car (or even a pretty damn good second-hand car with what Nambucca paid them) you get protection in a warranty.

What protection is any future client of Management Solutions going to get?